In the days since the Texas Legislature approved a new congressional map, lawmakers and candidates have been eyeing the new district lines. Several have already announced their plans to switch seats or step down based on the updated map.
This includes Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who currently represents the 37th congressional district in Austin. Doggett has said that if the new map is in effect for the upcoming midterms, he will step down – paving the way for Rep. Greg Casar, who currently represents the other half of Austin in the 35th district, to stay in office.
The new map, passed at the request of President Donald Trump, gives Republicans better odds to add five new Republican seats on Capitol Hill in the 2026 midterms.
Mark Jones, a professor at Rice University in Houston, said the areas where district lines were redrawn all have something in common.
“They are definitely places where Democrats hold seats and there are places where Republicans believe they can get an advantage – with a strong focus on areas where Republicans have seen growth in the Latino vote,” Jones said.
The new map is forcing some elected officials to make new choices, including Rep. Al Green, who represents District 9 in the Houston area.
“The new District 9 will bear no resemblance to the old District 9 – it only has about 5 percent of the old District 9 in it. On the other hand, the new District 18 — that’s the one that was historically represented by Sheila Jackson Lee, who passed away, then by Sylvester Turner who passed away and now there’s a special election — that contains two-thirds of Green’s old District 9,” Jones said.
“So it’s a natural place for him to move into, especially since there is no incumbent right now because they’re holding a special election in November that’s virtually certain to go to a late January or early February runoff.”
The fallout from the maps is playing out like musical chairs for Democrats, as congressional representatives scramble to adjust to fewer seats in reliably blue districts.
“Here in the Houston area, we’ve gone from effectively having four Democratic districts to three,” Jones said. “That means that there’s going to be one Democrat out, either whoever wins the special election in District 18, Congressman Al Green, Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, or Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia.”
Each Democratic district has shifted boundaries, too, which makes it hard for some lawmakers to know what their best bet is to stay in office, Jones said.
“The new District 29, which is Garcia’s district, has changed pretty substantially. It actually is more the current District 18 than the old District 29,” he said. “That could be a place where she’s the one that loses out, because that district, while it has a narrow Hispanic majority in the Democratic primary… Black voters represent a narrow plurality.”
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There is a similar situation playing out in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
“You have three Democratic seats that are being crushed into effectively two,” Jones said. “The safest person there is Jasmine Crockett in her District 30, but Marc Veasey, who comes from Fort Worth, is being pushed over into Dallas and he’s actually pushing out Julie Johnson. She’s a congresswoman there who will have to decide either to run in her current district, which is going to be very Republican, or challenge someone like Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne.”
These maps are not set in stone. Several lawsuits have already been filed, including one by the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Another lawsuit, filed by LULAC on behalf of 13 Texas residents, claims the redrawn districts are racially discriminatory and violate voter protection laws. Jones said these lawsuits will be a test of how diluted the Voting Rights Act has become.
“But they’re unlikely to effectively decide that until at least after the 2026 election. And more likely than not, that will be something decided after the 2028 election,” he said.
“So the maps may change for the 2030 election. But the most likely scenario is that these are the maps that are definitely in place for 2026 and more likely than not in place in 2028 as well, unless the Texas Republicans decide once again they want to reconfigure and have another mid-decade redistricting after the 2026 elections.”
